Owen starts the poem by describing the exhaustion of the group of men. The poem begins with a simile –

“bent double, like old beggars under sacks,”

which shows the reader immediately that the men are exhausted, walking slowly and dragging their feet along the ground, using up all their effort lifting one foot after another whilst they have no energy. He says that they are like ‘old beggars under sacks’ because their tattered clothes are caked in mud, which conveys, to the reader, the horrific conditions of the trenches. Another simile that Owen uses is –

that quotation shows that the men are like old women with a harsh hacking cough, being ill and too weak. Their coughs would come from wearing the cold wet clothes, causing lung disease, you would almost be able to hear them coughing up phlegm. Owen goes on to tell us how the men were dragging their feet. Through the “sludge” they “trudge�

to show how frustrated they were walking through the sludge. They had no energy; it was being drained from them as they were trying to escape from the trenches. As the flares lit up the sky, the flares marked the position of dead or injured soldiers. The poet describes this as “Haunting” this is because they are haunted by the carnage and slaughter they had witnessed. Owen says that they are haunting also as the soldiers could have flashbacks or nightmares about the flares going off which could be haunting to them.

he uses a simile as if the man being burned by the gas attack is being compared to someone burning in a fire. His skin is being burnt away and it is as if he has been covered in lime. We can feel the mans pain and agony as his flesh is burning.

Some topics in this essay:
GAS Quick, Wilfred Owen, gas attack, Decorum Est, soldier dying, fitting die country, Et Decorum, die country, onomatopoeic words, panicing gas, exhausted walking, trench warfare, verse owen, extended metaphor, green sea,